Teaching

Preparing future generations of scholars and leaders to deal intelligently with issues of national security law is perhaps the Center's highest priority. Both the Director and the Associate Director teach at the University of Virginia School of Law, and the most important part of the Center's work to date has involved teaching and course preparation.

For more than four decades, Professor John Norton Moore has been teaching a course on national security law at the law school, which began as the first course of its kind in the nation. He has also taught the subject at Georgetown University Law Center and American University School of Law. In addition, Professor Moore teaches courses in oceans law and policy, international law, the rule of law, and ethical issues in foreign policy. In past years he has taught courses in the Constitution and foreign affairs powers, and the goals of U.S. foreign policy. He has authored many publications, including Solving the War Puzzle (2004) and Civil Litigation Against Terrorism (2004).

For more than twenty years, Professor Moore also served as the Director of the Graduate Law Program at Virginia, during which time he oversaw the training and advanced scholarship of hundreds of attorneys and legal scholars from the United States and around the world. Many of his former students have gone on to hold senior positions in government or to academic prominence. He continues to supervise graduate work on a regular basis.

Associate Director and Center co-founder Professor Robert F. Turner has taught undergraduate courses in international law, U.S. foreign policy, and an occasional seminar on such topics as foreign policy and the law and the Vietnam War, in what is now the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at UVA. Professor Turner has also served as the Charles H. Stockton Professor of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College.

Professors Moore and Turner teach a series of interdisciplinary seminars on advanced topics in national security law and policy at the Law School. In the fall of 2016 Professors Moore and Turner will co-teach "Legal and Policy Issues of the Indochina War." Professor Moore also teaches a seminar "War and Peace: New Thinking About War and War Avoidance" offered in alternate years.

Fall 2016 Teaching Schedule

Few public issues have been more controversial or more misunderstood that America’s tragic involvement in Indochina, and to profit from our past mistakes we must first ascertain what really happened and what went wrong. Not only is it useful to review the old Indochina debates in the light of recent evidence (E.g., what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964, or at My Lai in 1969?), but the conflict provides a useful microcosm for examining a diverse range of broader issues, including: the legal regulation of the initiation of coercion and the conduct of military operations, the role of Congress in the use of military force and the 1973 War Powers Resolution, and legal regimes governing war crimes and the treatment of prisoners of war. Both professors were actively involved in the academic debates 50 years ago and have published extensively on these issues. Past guest lecturers in this seminar have included a former CIA Director, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former Marine Corps Commandant, and a former prisoner of war; and several distinguished guest lecturers address the group each year. Co-taught by Professors Moore and Turner.

Written requirement: A substantial research paper. Active class participation expected.

This course is taught by the former U.S. Ambassador and Chairman of the National Security Council Interagency Task Force on the Law of the Sea, which coordinated United States oceans policy during the critical early negotiations leading to the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention. The course begins by examining the goals of oceans policy, outlining both community and United States' interests; providing several frameworks for analysis; then defining oceans claims and their political, economic, and strategic context. After a brief introduction to oceanography, the course moves into a detailed discussion of issues in international oceans policy, including the Law of the Sea and U.S. policy, the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, sources of current oceans law, navigation and communication, the economic zone, straddling stocks and highly migratory species, the continental margin, protection of the marine environment, marine scientific research, boundary disputes and dispute settlement, deep seabed mining, national security and international incidents, and polar policy. This section ends with an examination of several case studies on illegal oceans claims and strategies for their control. In its final section, the course explores issues in national oceans policy, focusing on the Navy, Merchant Marine development, fisheries management and aquaculture, continental shelf development, coastal zone management, and organization of the national oceans policy process and the future of oceans policy.

This seminar will consider the phenomenon of terrorism as practiced by the perpetrators of the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 (9/11). It will explore the various motivations for the attacks- religious, political and societal- and the position of the attackers as non-state actors. It will look at the posture of the U.S. Intelligence Community before the attacks and after, and examine the inadequacies, mistakes, lack of coordination and preparedness that beset the CIA and FBI especially, as they confront a potential age of relentless suicidal terror. We shall focus on the particular challenge posed by suicidal terror to democratic societies based on the rule of law. We shall look at the reviews of 9/11 and Iraqi WMD compiled by two Congressional bodies, two outside blue ribbon commissions, and a Special Advisor to the DCI, and their recommendations to improve America’s intelligence and law enforcement defenses to the threat of ongoing non-state suicidal terror. We shall finally examine the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

Written requirement: A substantial research paper. Active class participation expected.

This seminar will cover the national security process in the US from the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 to the present. It will cover important national security movements and moments such as containment of the Soviet Union after the Kennan "Long Telegram," the onset of CIA-mounted covert action, the passage of the National Security Act Amendment of 1949, the Bay of Pigs, and Osama bin Laden and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Written requirement: A substantial research paper. Active class participation expected.

Spring 2016 Teaching Schedule

One of the fastest growing areas of legal inquiry is national security law, which began at Virginia with this course more than two decades ago and has since been taught at approximately half of the nation's accredited law schools. This course, taught by the principal founder of the field, is a comprehensive introduction, blending relevant international and national law. It defines national security and presents information about the causes of war and traditional approaches to preventing war, including information about the "democratic peace" and other newer approaches. The course examines the historical development of the international law of conflict management. It then takes up institutional modes of conflict management, including the United Nations system and the role of the Security Council. Addressing the lawfulness of using force in international relations, the course discusses the prohibition of war as an instrument of national policy, the Rio Treaty and the revised charter of the Organization of American States, and low-intensity conflict, intervention, anticipatory defense, and other continuing problems. It then examines several case studies of specific national security issues, including the Indochina War, the "secret war" in Central America, the Gulf War, and Kosovo, as well as case studies in United Nations peacekeeping and peace enforcement (including the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, and Rwanda). It examines human rights for contexts of violence, that is, the norms concerning the conduct of hostilities, providing an overview of the protection of non-combatants and procedures for implementation and enforcement. It looks at war crimes and the Nuremberg principles, and the new international criminal court as well as the Yugoslav and Rwanda tribunals. It briefly reviews American Security Doctrine, then turns to the general issues of strategic stability and arms control, examining nuclear weapons and their effects, and general arms control negotiations. It briefly addresses the security aspects of oceans law, then examines in detail the national institutional framework for the control of national security, including the authority of Congress and the president to make national security decisions, and the war powers and constitutional issues in the debate on interpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The course then examines the national security process including the national command structure, and looks at secrecy, access to information, and the classification system. It reviews intelligence and counterintelligence law, and ends with a review of individual rights
and accountability as they interface with national security.

This seminar will trace the development of intelligence law from the creation of the CIA in 1947, through the Cold War, to the current War on Terrorism. It will look at the USA PATRIOT ACT of 2001 and the more recent effort to strengthen intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the inaccurate intelligence on Iraqi WMD, both administratively and with passage of the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. We shall seek to decide whether the threat of international and domestic terrorism is primarily an intelligence problem or a law enforcement/military one informed by good intelligence. We shall also arrive at a view of the propriety and legality of coercive interrogations, pre-emptive incarcerations, and intrusive surveillance in a constitutional democracy.

Written requirement: A substantial research paper. Active class participation.

One of the fastest growing areas of legal inquiry is national security law, which began at Virginia with this course more than two decades ago and has since been taught at approximately half of the nation's accredited law schools. This course, taught by the principal founder of the field, is a comprehensive introduction, blending relevant international and national law. It defines national security and presents information about the causes of war and traditional approaches to preventing war, including information about the "democratic peace" and other newer approaches. The course examines the historical development of the international law of conflict management. It then takes up institutional modes of conflict management, including the United Nations system and the role of the Security Council. Addressing the lawfulness of using force in international relations, the course discusses the prohibition of war as an instrument of national policy, the Rio Treaty and the revised charter of the Organization of American States, and low-intensity conflict, intervention, anticipatory defense, and other continuing problems. It then examines several case studies of specific national security issues, including the Indochina War, the "secret war" in Central America, the Gulf War, and Kosovo, as well as case studies in United Nations peacekeeping and peace enforcement (including the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, and Rwanda). It examines human rights for contexts of violence, that is, the norms concerning the conduct of hostilities, providing an overview of the protection of non-combatants and procedures for implementation and enforcement. It looks at war crimes and the Nuremberg principles, and the new international criminal court as well as the Yugoslav and Rwanda tribunals. It briefly reviews American Security Doctrine, then turns to the general issues of strategic stability and arms control, examining nuclear weapons and their effects, and general arms control negotiations. It briefly addresses the security aspects of oceans law, then examines in detail the national institutional framework for the control of national security, including the authority of Congress and the president to make national security decisions, and the war powers and constitutional issues in the debate on interpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The course then examines the national security process including the national command structure, and looks at secrecy, access to information, and the classification system. It reviews intelligence and counterintelligence law, and ends with a review of individual rights
and accountability as they interface with national security.